Credit Suisse has hired the former head of sponsors in Europe at Barclays as a managing director in its leveraged finance and sponsors group, at a time when private equity firms have been rushing to dispose of assets.

Matthew Grinnell will be responsible for a number of the bank’s most important private equity relationships and will report to Mathew Cestar and Didier Denat, co-heads of the leveraged finance and sponsors group in Europe, the Middle East and Africa, according to a memo seen by Financial News.

A spokeswoman for Credit Suisse confirmed the contents of the memo.

Grinnell joins Credit Suisse from Barclays where he was chairman of the financial sponsors group in Emea. He had previously run the financial sponsors business in Emea at the bank between 2009 and 2013 before being made chairman of the group in a reshuffle late last year.

Having started his career as a fund manager in Hong Kong, Grinnell first joined Lehman Brothers in New York where he worked as a telecoms industry banker. He rose to the role of co-head of the European financial sponsors team at Lehman Brothers, a position he held at the time when the bank went bankrupt in 2008.

Grinnell subsequently joined Barclays in 2009 following a short stint as co-head of the European financial sponsors at Nomura.

It has been a busy year for financial sponsors activity in Europe, with overall investment banking revenues from the sector reaching $2.9 billion for the year-to-date, up 16.2% on the same period in 2013. Credit Suisse is fifth in Dealogic’s financial sponsor bank ranking for the region, having taken $195 million in fees.

In June, Anthony Diamandakis, who was a managing director in Credit Suisse's leveraged finance and financial sponsors group, left to join Citi as head of the US bank's alternative assets group which caters to the bank’s private equity clients.

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Barclays, meanwhile, has relocated Andrew Richards from Hong Kong to join its financial sponsors team in London and hired Marc Chowrimootoo from Bank of America Merrill Lynch as a managing director in its leveraged finance team.

UPDATE: This article has been updated to include Dealogic data on Credit Suisse's revenues from financial sponsors investment banking.